Babe the Blue Ox here.

Paul has not left the cabin in four days, working his way through a whole standard pallet of Kentucky whiskey. Every few minutes, I hear the clank of another empty flying out the window onto a pile that is now bigger than one of my cow-pies.

Okay, while Paul is out of it for a while, here’s the deal. Yes, the election was stolen. But it was stolen fair and square. You can’t cheat an honest man, and who lets an election get stolen? A wussy does, is what the Babe has to say about that. John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Ed Muskie, what do they all have in common? Um, they’re wusses? Uh huh.

The Democrats have one big problem. The word Conservative is just a whole lot of a better word than the word Liberal. Conservative is what you want your football team to be in the Superbowl–that is, unless they’re Losing in the 3rd quarter, or unless they are one of those one-hit-wonder teams that rely on a flashy offense of the kind that never win Superbowls. Conservative is what you want to be with your money. Conservative is what you want to be with your “powers” and your “energies” for “when it really matters.” Conservative is what you want to be as a Liberal with one of your key concerns, i.e. the environment, because you are a Conservationist.

Liberal is not what you want anybody to be with your daughter. When you say that somebody uses a word, or a spice, or their drinking, or anything else “Liberally,” you’re making fun of ’em. Somebody who is Liberal with his money is good to have as a friend, but is definitely not someone whose business you would invest in.

The British Liberal Party of 200 years ago began as a radical opposition movement against the old entrenched powers. Back then the alarming connotations of Liberality as a policy of state (“Sure take whatever you want. I’m feelin’ loose.”), were not a problem because they were meant as a provocation. These were the guys who wanted to break up the old system of rigid state control, whether the Tory or Whig version. The Liberal idea was freedom, that is to stop fighting the forces of change, let it loose with free trade, free religious expression, and expansion of the voting franchise.

The Liberals went from radicalism to decades of political domination at the very height of British glory and empire. They held on to power so long because the crazy Liberal idea worked just as they thought it would: it created wealth without completely destroying society. In their early years of rule they could rely on the nearly unanimous support of the newly emerging class of people who were the direct beneficiaries of this wealth, that is everybody who made real money off of the industrial revolution, from capitalists to engineers to merchants to ad-men.

It’s significant that the Liberals hit the rocks when they tried to expand their set of Enlightenment ideals from the individual-oriented principles of free trade and free expression to the universalist principles of national self-determination and protection of human welfare. Half of their base of support deserted them when it came to Home Rule for Ireland and poor-relief at home. The Liberal, or anti-Tory, cause was lost until the emergence of the Industrial Worker power base and the Labour Party. It’s significant also that while Whigs yielded to Liberals and Liberals to Labour, a Tory remained a Tory. The impulse to say no to change, to try to turn back time, is a basic and primitive impulse that needs no name change or even any explanation.

Things went a little differently in the U.S. For one thing, before the Liberal party even existed in England, the U.S. was established with a Constitution and Bill of Rights that made it the most Liberal nation that had ever existed. And so our political struggles broke out along different lines, with a series of changing sets of party oppositions that were aligned not so much to the classic Liberal/Conservative opposition as to regional or class conflicts, such as between the South and North or between industrial and agricultural regions.

The result is a very twisted and complex genealogy of U.S. political parties. For example, the Democratic party was originally founded on states’ rights and opposition to taxes, causes eventually taken up by Republicans just as they took up the principle of Racism when the Democrats abandoned it. Meanwhile, the Republican Party of Lincoln was in some respects the counterpart of the Liberals in England, and remained so until Teddy Roosevelt defected from the party in 1912.

The Liberal, progressive, or anti-conservative cause has shifted its objectives over time. Liberalism meant free-trade in early 19th century England when the existing autocracy needed to be broken to permit industry to develop, but it meant trust-busting around the turn of the century when industrial wealth had gained too much power. Liberalism at first ignored the worker, but then took up his cause after it won him the franchise and after public education and new media technologies made it possible for the masses to participate in politics. Idealistic humanitarian, environmental, and civil rights issues have always been a part of Liberalism, but have always been contentious, having periodically torn its voting bases to shreds since the Liberals fell into decline in England some 120 years ago.

To be a Liberal means to have an answer to the complaint that “things were better off the way they used to be.” The problem is nobody really believes this; everybody actually believes on an emotional level that things were better before. The enormous advantage, on the other hand, is that thing are going to change whether or not we want them to, and thus all Conservatives will always be wrong. And so far, nostalgia aside, all of this change, at least in America, has been for the better. The key is to realize what needs to happen and to make it happen, like, for example, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and Johnson did.

Two headlines from yesterday’s papers:

“Bush Campaigns With Brother, Accuses Kerry Of Using Scare Tactics”

(The Frontrunner, 10-20-04)

“Cheney, Invoking Specter of a Nuclear Attack, Questions Kerry’s Strength”

(NYTimes 10-20-04)

Hey Sports Fans, Yankee Doodle here, close and personal friend of Uncle Sam’s. Yesterday, I received a letter from the Pillsbury Dough Boy asking:

Do you have any info on why I should vote Kerry and not Bush?

Honestly, I don’t like either, but I would hope to have some real facts to work with. Unfortunately, the American Political landscape is full of lies and deceit. Especially the 2000 election bullshit in Florida and the Iraq War. That is why I won’t vote for Bush, but Kerry really isn’t a good replacement. What do I do?

~ PDB

Dear PDB,

Well, I completely agree. However, always remember that you are voting for one of two “behind the scenes” World Order (WO) agendas. And from where I sit as our nation’s _other_ red, white and blue superstar, I would rather have the Kerry World Order faction in place than the Bush one. The Bush WO faction is about Oil, Arms, Pharmaceuticals (big profits from the disease model of health care) and other Drug Running (propping up Wall Street – i.e. FARC and poppy’s cabal), and basically makes its power from creating war (including the draft BTW).

Remember Bush’s father’s famous one-liner in 1990 that nobody but the insiders understood – eternal war for eternal peace? Or Bush Jr.’s “I just know how the world works,” line the other night? Kerry’s faction is more aligned around technology. While they are hell-bent on outer technology to disempower the masses, at least it is not as environmentally insane as the Bush WO approach. And when democrats are in the White House, it’s just a helluva lot easier to make your way through the “system,” to deal with bureaucracy. Plus, it gives us all a better opportunity to wake up to our own INNER power. At least with Kerry, I have a better shot of hearing from my inner power than from the Bush faction, with the overload of everyone running scared from some terrorist boogeyman.

Many of my international colleagues believe that the Bushco WO faction was behind 9/11 in order to ignite and further their agenda. My belief, along with Uncle Sam, is that Bush looked the other way in hopes that 9/11 would be the break his faction needed. Indeed, if you look at it big picture, 9/11 shifted the economy from technology as we knew it (circa 1990’s) back to the old guard military industrial companies, such as Lockheed, Halliburton, etc. Basically, you have two bonesmen representing the two WO factions, so it is a choice of how you want your Lords and Masters to rule over you.

The third choice is to buy a small island in the South Pacific, declare it Sovereign, pitch a tent and move there. The Powers That Be have pretty much locked up the rest of the planet at this point.

Blessings,

Yankee Doodle

If Bush wins (and I do mean “if”) the key reason will be that Americans are afraid of changing pale horses of death in mid-nightmare. So Kerry needs to shout: “Wake Up!” And he needs to do so in so many different ways that somehow enough people hear it and have time to rise from their brainwashed slumber by November 2. Kerry needs to convey this vibe in all his answers, a sense of almost disbelief at what’s going on (laughing and shaking his head in mock shock at the latest Bush attack). And mainly, he needs to be having fun. In every sound byte, we need to see that fun is still possible, that levity and humor can still have a place in the West Wing. Kerry can win if he lifts us out of the pall of terror.

And, I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that current polls are showing that, post-debate, Kerry isn’t getting the bounce that he needs. What Kerry needs is to make his own bounce. He needs five (5) big messages that he just pounds on, from here to the election. When you go to www.johnkerry.com, there should be five compelling graphics with these themes, and when you click on them, a one minute video of Kerry talking his core position on the theme comes up, underneath of which there are more choices: Ask a Question Read Policy Paper See what America Thinks See more Video.

Herewith the five themes:

1) Right war or wrong war, we’re losing the war…

Kerry explains that we need to recast to win, and that he has the credibility to start fresh, and the experience to run the new war. He must emphasize that he’s not going to bail on the war on terror, and that he can be just as tough and vigilant as W.

2) We need allies to win the war; I can get ’em.

Kerry needs to remind us that hitting the reset button buys the US a lot. What might our allies say and do if the entire country throws Bush out. Kerry can reframe the situation. He can say: “I have wiggle room Bush has burnt up.” He can use his flip-flopper powers for good! If he is feeling particularly bold, he can even say that he will open up a second “peace” front, because he knows that war is not the only answer.

3) Bush is paid for by the rich and is not your friend. He lied to you and steals from you.

Nobody really cares about this one, but at least one of the five messages has got to say it.

4) I love America and always have – my history proves it.

We need constant, heart-rending rhetoric from Kerry about how “really loving America” means criticizing and helping to fix it. How America is always unfinished, but unless we keep improving it we stagnate. All that classic comic-book rhetoric: we need it now!

5) You can’t privatize everything and tax nothing.

Back to the economy, he can just point out again and again that Bush is bankrupting the country, losing us jobs, giving it all to the rich, and has no plan to reverse the trend.

But at the end of the day, Kerry has to show that he is a tough-minded, military-minded, no-nonsense true believe who will not lose control if we hand him the reins. That’s the majority of it.